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    PfSense with Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V

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    • S
      sickbro
      last edited by

      Just picked up one of the Gigabyte 1900N-DV3 boards.  I can't say I'd recommend it.  The bios is ships with (F1) is complete turd.  Booting from USB is almost impossible, in fact using a usb keyboard only works about 1 in 3 boots.  For me, I would have to clear the cmos after it stopped working in order for it to work again.  Updating the Bios to F2, is painful.  You have to turn off UEFI booting completely and turn on Legacy only.  This is based on the times you are able to get into the bios.  about half the time on the F1 bios it would just goto a black screen and hang.

      After I finally got F2 working, USB got a bit better, but that's about it.  I still get random black screens trying to enter the bios.  It randomly won't boot from usb devices.  In addition to all this, that heatsink is hot as hell.  I haven't had a chance to take the temperature yet, but too hot to touch.  This is with the top of the case completely off right now, so it's venting right out of the case.  I imagine I'll have to add a fan.

      I couldn't get pfsense to install on this system, it would kernal panic every boot.  I figured it might be related to the usb, so I installed pfsense to a hard drive on another pc, then moved it back to this.  It booted, and everything was good, except it wasn't.  I couldn't get DHCP on the WAN link to get an IP from the modem regardless of how I set it up.  I resorted to a reboot, thinking it might fix some problems, and now I'm back at square 1 with a kernal panic on every boot.  Obviously this is an issue for a different thread, so I won't go into it here, but needless to say, it's been a rough ride.

      Here's a thread about the horrors of updating the bios on Gigabytes site.  http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,14333.0.html

      I've also seen a few other threads on freenas, and open media vault forums about weird boot issues, and stability problems.  My advice, stay away at least until a new, more stable bios revision arrives.

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      • T
        toshinmac
        last edited by

        Hi,

        i can confirm these problems with this Motherboard.

        The installation of pfSense as a virtual machine on CentOS 6.5 with KVM also fails with the same problem.
        The error messages are different, once ACPI, even USB.
        With a USB keyboard sometimes I can not get into BIOS.
        The same with USB boot (Memory Stick, external drive etc.). Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

        A completely immature product is sold by Gigabyte.
        How about quality assurance or/and control?

        Does anyone have any ideas?
        Thanks a lot in advance!
        Cheers

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        • S
          sickbro
          last edited by

          I managed to get mine working after a lot of messing with it.  First thing is you have to be on the F1 bios.  The F2 bios fixes a lot of USB issues, but causes a lot of other issues.  In my case I had to install it on another computer and just physically move the drive over to the pfsense box.  Booting from data seems a lot less buggy, but I still have reboots that are not successful and just boot to a black screen.

          If you already upgraded to the F2 bios, in order to downgrade there's some magic voodoo to the power/reset buttons.  I found a post on another forum that worked.  Hold power button, let it turn on, then off, then back on.  Then hold the reset button let it power cycle a few more times, then let go.  This will then invoke the backup bios, which will still be F1 and copy it to the main bios.  It took me a few tries to get this to work, so just keep trying, it'll work eventually.

          After all these issues, I'm not problem free.  The issue I was having earlier with not getting a dhcp address on wan is only resolved by a full reboot.  No idea why a simple release and renew doesn't work.  My direct console still doesn't work well.  If I try and do anything but a standard boot, it just freezes.  I think this may go back to the USB issues of the F1 bios.  I've also heard rumors that it won't boot without a monitor attached.  Haven't tried this myself yet.

          The web GUI seems to be great though.  Other than not being able to release and renew the dhcp on the wan connection, everything is flawless.

          This is my first pfsense box, so I can't tell you much about how good it runs pfsense yet other than that it works.

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          • C
            chris23
            last edited by

            sorry to hear you guys having trouble with this board.

            A bit off topic sorry,

            But I thought while the topic was active I'd just say that I decided to go for the GA-C1037UN-EU board.

            Which is a dual core celeron, but nearly twice as fast at single thread jobs as the GA-J1900N-D3V board (as shown on the passmark website or somewhere I was looking).  Which for my application, I decided might suit better.

            Anyway I can report that for me this board "GA-C1037UN-EU" works just fine.  Easy install, no issues.

            CPU reports 65C in a fanless case.  In my rather warm house.
            Chris

            My weather station: http://rollestonpark.myzen.co.uk

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            • S
              speculatrix
              last edited by

              @chris23
              that's very interesting, thanks.

              the GA-J1900N-D3V has just become available in the UK from Lambdatek, and I was considering going ahead with my order (to use it to run Linux, but would have tested with pfSense) and now I'm reconsidering altogether.

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              • S
                speculatrix
                last edited by

                I asked my contact at Gigabyte UK if there will be any more BIOS updates to fix some of these problems, I'll update here if I hear anything.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • N
                  notar
                  last edited by

                  @chris23:

                  CPU reports 65C in a fanless case.  In my rather warm house.
                  Chris

                  Good morning
                  When you said 65C, is it in Fahrenheit or Celsius ? thanks (i am French)

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                  • J
                    jasonlitka
                    last edited by

                    He meant 65C.  For a fanless chip in a warm room that sounds about right.

                    I can break anything.

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                    • N
                      notar
                      last edited by

                      Thanks !

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                      • K
                        Kinjin
                        last edited by

                        I just got this board and have it set up and booting. I get a kernel panic when trying to boot pfsense due to acpi, when I try booting with acpi disabled or in safe more it will get to "IPsec: Initialized Security Association Processing" and just hang, I'm not sure whats causing it or how to get past it. Any suggestions?

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                        • J
                          josefius
                          last edited by

                          Unfortunately this board has a highly problematic bios and may not work at all for some…  Quite unlike gigabyte I would say... I would look for something from supermicro if stabilty is the main concern. Which bios are you using f1 or f2??

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                          • K
                            Kinjin
                            last edited by

                            Well after I got my board upgraded to F2 BIOS, I was able to install pfsense from a USB drive. It took my quite awhile to figure out how to get it to boot completely without giving me the error I posted about above or throwing an ACPI error. It seems the trick with my board is after evey boot from a power off state I have to go into BIOS and go to the options to Reset the default BIOS options and it works. Don't know why, I guess the BIOS is just buggy and immature. Other than that this board is working great. My temps hover around 38C.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • S
                              speculatrix
                              last edited by

                              a contact at Gigabyte sent me an F3 bios, no change log or anything. I haven't tested it as I've not bought the board pending these issues.

                              it's being discussed here:

                              http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=67563

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                              • N
                                notar
                                last edited by

                                Good morning
                                There are 2 new motherboard Asrock q1900. One is itx and other is micro atx. As somebody tried these boards with pfsense ? Thanks

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                                • F
                                  flank
                                  last edited by

                                  @midacts
                                  careful, the gigabyte board in the op's post only has a pci slot and you linked a pcie x4 nic

                                  I am also looking into this board for a pfsense build and I drawn to it due to its extremely low power consumption. I remember reading reviews on newegg for the asrock variants of the intel j1900 and a few users were saying to enable some boot option to support booting nix/bsd type operating systems. But for some reason all of newegg's reviews on the asrock j1900 boards are now removed??? So I took a look through asrock's manual in search for the boot option. I'm pretty sure what the newegg reviewers were saying was to disable Compability Support Module in order to boot nix/bsd OS's. Maybe the gigabyte boards have this boot option also, so if someone who already purchased one if these boards could test it out I would greatly appreciate it.

                                  Also to those who purchased the gigabyte board, could you please post what memory you are using, more specifically the voltage that the sodimm's run at.

                                  Thank You

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                                  • N
                                    notar
                                    last edited by

                                    Thanks wait and see !

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                                    • K
                                      Kinjin
                                      last edited by

                                      @flank:

                                      Also to those who purchased the gigabyte board, could you please post what memory you are using, more specifically the voltage that the sodimm's run at.

                                      Thank You

                                      It requires DDR3 SODIMM's that run at 1.35v.

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        That will be Celsius almost certainly.

                                        Steve

                                        Edit: Don't know what I did here, this post is totally out of context.  ::)

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                                        • D
                                          dwaler
                                          last edited by

                                          I bought this board (only found out about this thread afterwards) last Monday, together with 2 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix @ 1.35V and a 60GB Kingston (SSDNow). After having upgraded to F2 (which was indeed a bit of a pain) I got 2.2-ALPHA running without further issues. I followed the guides elsewhere on the forum and enabled CSM as well as disabling C-State. I've also enabled TRIM support by rebooting into single-user mode and running 'tunefs -t enable /'.

                                          As mentioned, running smooth now and not seeing any issues (yet). Will keep it running for another night before replacing my old firewall though (m0n0wall on an ancient Nokia IP110), just to be sure :)

                                          Just thought I'd share some positive news, hope this helps somebody!

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                                          • F
                                            flank
                                            last edited by

                                            awesome dwaler! keep up posted.

                                            I am really liking this board. I'm itching to put it in a m-350 mini-itx case with a pico psu and have a super small form factor pfsense box.

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